had been born, and whither she would have gone back--O how gladly!--
even to work in the fields.

Taking no exercise, she often could not sleep, and would rise in the
night or early morning and look out upon the then vacant
thoroughfare, where the lamps stood like sentinels waiting for some
procession to go by. An approximation to such a procession was
indeed made early every morning about one o'clock, when the country
vehicles passed up with loads of vegetables for Covent Garden market.
She often saw them creeping along at this silent and dusky hour--
waggon after waggon, bearing green bastions of cabbages nodding to
their fall, yet never falling, walls of baskets enclosing masses of
beans and peas, pyramids of snow-white turnips, swaying howdahs of
mixed produce--creeping along behind aged night-horses, who seemed
ever patiently wondering between their hollow coughs why they had
always to work at that still hour when all other sentient creatures
were privileged to rest. Wrapped in a cloak, it was soothing to
watch and sympathize with them when depression and nervousness
hindered sleep, and to see how the fresh green-stuff brightened to
life as it came opposite the lamp, and how the sweating animals
steamed and shone with their miles of travel.

They had an interest, almost a charm, for Sophy, these semirural
people and vehicles moving in an urban atmosphere, leading a life
quite distinct from that of the daytime toilers on the same road.
One morning a man who accompanied a waggon-load of potatoes gazed
rather hard at the house-fronts as he passed, and with a curious
emotion she thought his form was familiar to her. She looked out for
him again. His being an old-fashioned conveyance, with a yellow
front, it was easily recognizable, and on the third night after she